Marina and Ulay

Known as "the grandmother of performance art", Marina Abramović was born in Belgrade in 1946. She began her career as a performance artist in the 1970s, while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, and many of her early works were a form of rebellion against her strict upbringing. In her performances Abramović uses her body as an instrument for testing her own physical and mental limits, challenging spectators to step out of passive contemplation. Her work is marked by endurance and pain, repetition and duration, and by the emphasis it places on interaction with the audience.